Your health insurance may not provide the real coverage you need when you need to use it, and that is a very sad fact for many people.
The financial times in the US are getting increasingly tougher, especially as more and more people find themselves in the unemployment lines.
With all that stress in their lives, the last thing you need to have happen is to make use of your health insurance and THEN discover that it really does not provide the protection that you thought it did.
A health insurance plan typically provides protection in two ways.
First and foremost, it takes care of the illness or accident that you have experienced.
Many hospitals will put patients on an "as time permits" basis to look at them if they know that the person does not have health insurance.
They will of course never admit that, but privately and anonymously, many hospital workers have admitted this is true.
The second way it protects you is financially.
Even something as simple as a broken arm can easily run into a 4 figure bill after X-rays, casts, doctor examinations are completed.
You would shudder to think about how something very serious, like a cancer diagnosis, would cost after doctor exams, X-rays, medication, chemo, and everything else.
But the time to find out that your health insurance is not providing the coverage you thought it did, or maybe even that it is pure garbage, is NOW, and is definitely NOT when you are in the hospital filling out the admission forms.
When you are in the hospital bleeding all over the place, your health insurance better be top notch because it is too late at that point to make any changes to it for this particular incident.
Be sure you understand exactly what your health insurance provides and where that coverage stops.
For example, you may have a co-pay which is an amount that you pay for a doctor visit, a hospital stay, etc.
Find out how much that co-pay is.
Do you have prescription coverage? Many illnesses these days are treated with prescription medication that is not available over-the-counter.
Is this a big deal? It depends on the medications you require.
We know of someone who has a fairly common and serious ailment where her daily prescription pill is over $100 each and she needs to take one every day.
If your health insurance does not include prescriptions, this is going to be money out of your own pocket.
There is "random weirdness" in many of the discount health insurance policies also.
For example, one such discount policy will cover the SECOND day in the hospital but not the first one.
Another will not cover a hospital visit unless you are actually admitted to the hospital and stay overnight.
Another one excludes paying for an ambulance.
Give your health insurance program a good checkup and find out where it is lacking.
If it is lacking, start shopping for a program that protects you to the extent that you need and want protection.
To a great extent, you get what you pay for, but that does not mean that good health coverage is going to be astronomically expensive.
In fact, it's probably cheaper than you may think.
The financial times in the US are getting increasingly tougher, especially as more and more people find themselves in the unemployment lines.
With all that stress in their lives, the last thing you need to have happen is to make use of your health insurance and THEN discover that it really does not provide the protection that you thought it did.
A health insurance plan typically provides protection in two ways.
First and foremost, it takes care of the illness or accident that you have experienced.
Many hospitals will put patients on an "as time permits" basis to look at them if they know that the person does not have health insurance.
They will of course never admit that, but privately and anonymously, many hospital workers have admitted this is true.
The second way it protects you is financially.
Even something as simple as a broken arm can easily run into a 4 figure bill after X-rays, casts, doctor examinations are completed.
You would shudder to think about how something very serious, like a cancer diagnosis, would cost after doctor exams, X-rays, medication, chemo, and everything else.
But the time to find out that your health insurance is not providing the coverage you thought it did, or maybe even that it is pure garbage, is NOW, and is definitely NOT when you are in the hospital filling out the admission forms.
When you are in the hospital bleeding all over the place, your health insurance better be top notch because it is too late at that point to make any changes to it for this particular incident.
Be sure you understand exactly what your health insurance provides and where that coverage stops.
For example, you may have a co-pay which is an amount that you pay for a doctor visit, a hospital stay, etc.
Find out how much that co-pay is.
Do you have prescription coverage? Many illnesses these days are treated with prescription medication that is not available over-the-counter.
Is this a big deal? It depends on the medications you require.
We know of someone who has a fairly common and serious ailment where her daily prescription pill is over $100 each and she needs to take one every day.
If your health insurance does not include prescriptions, this is going to be money out of your own pocket.
There is "random weirdness" in many of the discount health insurance policies also.
For example, one such discount policy will cover the SECOND day in the hospital but not the first one.
Another will not cover a hospital visit unless you are actually admitted to the hospital and stay overnight.
Another one excludes paying for an ambulance.
Give your health insurance program a good checkup and find out where it is lacking.
If it is lacking, start shopping for a program that protects you to the extent that you need and want protection.
To a great extent, you get what you pay for, but that does not mean that good health coverage is going to be astronomically expensive.
In fact, it's probably cheaper than you may think.